1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable terminal such as a cellular phone, a PHS (Personal Handy Phone System) or a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) including a mail transmission function including e-mail, and in particular, to the portable terminal that allows a user to easily input a destination address of mail.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a mail function is available on a portable terminal such as a cellular phone or a PHS.
Such a portable terminal includes an operating portion and an input portion allowing a user to input a character string in order to create a message body of a mail. When inputting a destination address, the user can input it by using the operating portion or input portion as with the message body of mail because mail address consists of a character string. However, it is cumbersome that inputting the destination address character by character in this way as with inputting the message body.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-249785 has proposed that the destination addresses stored in an address book or the like should be sequentially displayed on a display to select a desired destination address by referring thereto. The proposed method simplifies the user's operation of inputting the destination addresses of mail to be sent out to the desired destination without memorizing the addresses of the other parties each time.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-285080 has further proposed that the functions of operation keys of the operating portion should be customized to facilitate operations.
In any of the methods, the user inputs the destination address on a separate screen for inputting destination address from a screen for inputting message body of a mail.
For that reason, when the user creates and transmits the mail by using such a portable terminal, the user needs to be thoroughly familiar with many steps of an operating procedure for mail creation and transmission including a method of calling the destination address input screen. More specifically, even with the functions of referring to the addresses in the address book and customizing the operation keys as in the aforementioned documents, the operations involves switching of different screens such as a screen for inputting message body or a screen for inputting destination addresses, and such switching operation of screens back and forth are so complicated that they are difficult especially for an elderly person, a physically handicapped person and others.